Urban gardening project: Part one

Turning my old parking space into an urban edible garden. The tree and hedge make a nice microclimate, the southside in the picture is to the right making it the perfect space for me to turn it into a garden.

What I have done so far:
-I used a spit fork/broad fork (not sure what it's called in English) to loosen up the compacted sandy soil, so I could remove all the perennials, I saved all the dandelion roots and washed them all up, I have seen a video of someone making dandelion coffee by drying out the roots and then roasting them to make dandelion coffee and I would like to try that as well, it might be a nice replacement because nowadays I only drink water and tea.

-I moved the concrete tiles 50x50cm (19.5x19.5~ inches), my plan to get rid of them is to place it on a website to sell second hand items, and put it up for free to pick up. I used a shovel and stuck it under the tile being able to lever it against the compressed sand underneath it, making it easy to pick it up, but gosh those tiles are heavy, and it being 30 (86F) degrees celsius outside wasn't favourable either.

-After removing all the weeds I equalized the sand, and raked out most of the stones at the top.

-I used my spitfork again to loosen up the whole area once again, and raked out the majority of stones  sadly enough i tilled some of the hedge's roots up, and damaging the plant although I think it will survive because it has a very developed root system as the hedge is trimmed down throughout the year.

I still have to make a design for my gardening beds, but I am thinking of making a raised bed making it to place a mulch like wood chips for the paths. It would be really cool by making a raised by from pallet wood.

Edit: The plant you see stick out of the hedge is presumably an Elm, I am not a 100% sure but it could have been growing there; other side of the pavement there is a big Elm that might have had a success of reproducing itself. Are there any people that are able to identify and confirm if it's an Elm?

To be continued

Looks like an elm. Nice work! It's always exciting to see patches of concrete become gardens.

It looks like it's coming along beautifully! It'll be so much nicer looking at a garden rather than a car, too. :-) Looking forward to updates!

Michelle Czolba wrote:Looks like an elm. Nice work! It's always exciting to see patches of concrete become gardens.

Thanks for confirming.  Any suggestion on how to eliminate it? I was thinking of digging it up with my trowel and cut below the rootball with my pruners, not sure how well that will work though.

Yeah Daan, it doesn't look that big yet so it should be able to be dug up.

Lovely! Turning most of our driveway into a garden has been the best decision we've ever made.

And yes, if you dry then roast the dandelion roots (nothing scientific - I just popped mine in the oven when I was roasting some veggies), then grind, you can infuse to make an ersatz coffee. Pretty nice with milk and honey, actually. It's quite labor intensive to dig the roots for a single cup, but if you're going to dig them anyway, there is a nice poetic symbolism about eating the darn things.